Recently, there have been a slew of articles written about women and Occupy Wall Street. Particularly, the need for a feminist presence in the movement and the recognition that women are often the ones who suffer the most under an inequitable economic system.

In an unfortunate, but hardly surprising, male-centric lapse of judgement, some dudes decided that the best way to get folks out to protest was to turn women into sacrificial lambs, with a site and video called “Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street.” I mean, why bother paying any attention to women if they aren’t turning you on? In fact, why bother doing anything at all if you can’t reinforce your male power by objectifying women?

Though this kind of attitude towards women in progressive movements is nothing new, this particular brand of douchebaggery doesn’t seem to at all be representative of the Occupy  movement as a whole. This is, in fact, a movement that is very much relevant to women and very much needs a feminist perspective within it. As pointed out by Angi Becker Stevens, in a piece posted at the Ms. Magazine Blog:

Because we are already starting from a disadvantaged position, women are often among the hardest hit in economically troubled times, and this is especially true for women of color. Women are also disproportionately impacted when states slash public services, as so many have done in recent months. Because they are far more likely than men to be single parents struggling to provide for a family on a single income, many women are devastated by cuts to family assistance programs. And as we have seen repeatedly with the threatened federal cuts to Planned Parenthood funding, as well as several individual states’ recent cuts to family planning programs, women’s health services are considered by many politicians to be expendable.

This is a movement that is very much about us, the 51%. Not only is corporate capitalism a system that is tied to and thrives via a deep connection to patriarchy and a hierarchical  system of power that is racist and sexist at its core, but it thrives on the backs of women, literally.

A flier created by New York feminists, Rebecca Sloan, Cathy Barbarits, and Kathy Miriam that is being handed out at Occupy Wall Street, points out that the unpaid (and underpaid) labour done by women are the legs of the capitalist system:

Global capitalism is made possible by women’s unpaid work in the household…In Canada unpaid work is estimated to be worth up to 41% of the GDP.  The shifting the burden of domestic labor from elite women to the domestic laborers (maids) culled from subordinate groups of women (immigrants; women of color; poor women) is another part of this same process of exploitation.

Women of colour, in particular, are most often the ones who are left behind and stepped on in a system that functions on economic inequality.  They are the ones who end up doing the work that white women of privilege don’t want to do and they are the ones who are least likely to be able to climb past the glass ceiling and into positions of power.

It is also imperative that we recognize the way in which these exploitative systems lead to and encourage sex work and trafficking, another industry that impacts marginalized women and women of colour particularly. As pointed out in the same flier:

Trafficking occurs in a context of global economic inequalities and a failure to respect the human rights of a majority of the world’s population. Enormous amounts of people find themselves unable to provide for their families and are forced into situations of extreme desperation.

Women who are poor and women who are vulnerable are often the ones who have no choice but to resort to sex work, who are prostituted, and who are trafficked.

Indeed, the Occupy movement, is about us, the 51%.

So, how does this all relate to Slutwalk, as the title of this article implies? Well, it doesn’t, really, although in what is perhaps an act of desperation on the parts of Slutwalk organizers and participants who are watching their briefly novel movement drift into the background in the face of a movement that is truly radical and potentially revolutionary, a couple of people have tried very hard to link the two movements.

An article by Bryce Covert, at Alternet, imagines that Slutwalk and Occupy Wall Street are linked via ‘raw emotion’, and because both movements are ‘calling out the culture at large.’

In another piece written by Hanqing Chen, entitled: NYC SlutWalk Gets OWS Fever, the author writes that SlutWalk’s activists “said the Wall Street protests have paved the way forward in building attention for their own movement,” imagining that they will “partner with Occupy Wall Street to spread their own message.” So first Slutwalk tries to co-opt feminism, and now they want to co-opt the Occupy movement? Well, good luck.

The differences between the two movements are numerous. But perhaps most important is that which was recently pointed out by Eve Ensler:

The genius of Occupy Wall Street is that so far it is not brandable and that’s what makes its potential so daunting, so far reaching, so inclusive, and so dangerous. It cannot be defined and so it cannot be sold, as a sound bite or a political party or even a thing. It can’t be summed up and dismissed.

The key to Slutwalk’s popularity was that it was brandable right from the get go. It was salable. Slutwalk was loved by the media and by many because it provided exactly what mainstream culture wants and needs in order to sell a product: women’s bodies. It replicated images and messages that are easily consumed by the dominant culture, that is: women are consumable and they are to be looked at. It told us that which we already know: don’t bother looking at or listening to women unless they are up on a stage, dancing around in their underwear for an audience.

Whereas the Occupy movement is a direct response to a neoliberal capitalist system, Slutwalk was a ‘movement’ (if you want to call it that) that sprang from and embraced neoliberal capitalism. It sold women and it sold sex work as empowerment. Slutwalk bought right into to everything that we are being sold, turned it around and told the world that this was the route to liberation. Most of all, it sold a message of individualism – the key to the success of the capitalist system. Capitalism is all about the message of indivualism vs collectivism, man is an island under a capitalist system, and we are all to believe that if we work hard enough, as individuals, we can be successful. Health care, social safety nets, affordable housing? Those things are all a pain in the ass if you’re already wealthy and privileged. Those things don’t affect you if you aren’t poor or marginalized, so why bother? Other people aren’t your responsibility if you are a capitalist and if something makes you feel good then gosh darn it, you should do it!

Sound familiar? Slutwalk argued, right off the bat, that this was a movement all about individuals and that, if what they were doing, as individuals, was impacting other women negatively, well, too freakin bad. If you think sex work is great, then it’s great, regardless of how it impacts and hurts and exploits other women; women with less privilege than yourself. If you want to call yourself a slut and encourage men to call you a slut (because now that’s empowering!), then do it! Even if it throws other women under the bus in the process.

Slutwalk followed the rules. They bought into a patriarchal, neoliberal, capitalist message and tried to sell it back to us as revolutionary. But it wasn’t.

The Occupy movement never followed the rules. They did not partner with the cops and they didn’t ask for permits.The Occupy movement, rather, is challenging and confronting  ‘the rules’ and is taking on the ideologies of capitalism and individualism. They are not asking for permission.

Occupy Wall Street did not build a movement that would be salable to the mainstream media. They did not build a movement with the specific intention to attract the attention of the media. They did not need a shocking and controversial name to sell themselves and they certainly did not need pole-dancing women to build momentum.

This does not mean that the Occupy movement is free of, or should escape criticism.

Peter Gelderloos notes, in an article for counterpunch.org that this movement must be careful to build on what has been learned from past progressive movements:

All of these [past radical] movements constitute lessons learned that can be passed down to aid future struggles. So often, the mistakes that defeat a revolutionary movement are repeated.

Gelderloos goes on to say:

In general, people in the United States face severe disadvantages in fighting power. The popular struggles of past generations were brutally crushed and critical lessons were not passed on. People have to start from scratch in a society constructed to meet the needs of money. In part because of this, people in the US have a unique opportunity to influence struggles worldwide, should they overcome the obstacles and turn these protests into something powerful.

And we, as feminists, must ensure that this movement includes an analysis of the way in which women are particularly disenfranchised under a capitalist system and ensure that women are not relegated to a position that requires they are ‘seen and not heard’ as the ‘Hot Chicks of Wall Street’ video does.

Yes, there are flaws in the Occupy movement, but it hasn’t begun from a position that is complicit in the very systems it claims to confront. It has not sent a message of individualism and it hasn’t told those who dare to critique it that if they don’t like it they can sit down and shut up.

Any comparisons between Slutwalk and the Occupy movement are desperate, if anything, as the focus moves away (finally) from half-naked women with the word ‘slut’ plastered across their faces and bodies, to a movement that demands the system change, and doesn’t simply aim to re-frame oppression and encourage women to make the most of  what we’ve got. What we need is something new, something drastically different – and that is going to take more than media coverage and personal catharsis.

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By Natalie Hill

Natalie Hill is an MA student in the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies. She graduated from the School of Journalism at Carleton University, is a core organizing member of WAM! Vancouver (Women, Action and the Media). She is interested in effective transnational activism to end violence against women.

Feminists organizing for women’s rights in 2011 face a unique challenge: as community organizers, just what defines “our” community? Anyone reading this blog can likely recognize the oft-repeated mantras: we live in a borderless society; we are a global community.

The phrases “global feminism” and “transnational feminism” have surfaced in recent decades, and are now thrown around (often interchangeably) when discussing international feminist movements, gatherings or alliances.  But there is a big difference between global feminism and transnational feminism.  It boils down to whether we are committed to wide-reaching, yet locally sensitive organizing, or if we prefer to promote a one-size-fits-all, please-all-the-world diluted pseudo-feminist politic.

Margaretha Geertsma, an associate professor at Butler University’s Faculty of Journalism and Communication, has written extensively on this topic in recent years.  She describes global feminism as a white, hegemonic US-based feminism, blind to difference and unique global contexts in the pursuit of a movement that “unites” all women (“Look! We all did a Slutwalk! My signs are in English, yours in Tagalog, we are one.  Success!”).  Other critics of the concept of a “global sisterhood” go even further, describing them as homogenizing, narrow, Eurocentric and imperialist.

Transnational feminism, on the other hand, treats difference – in experience, location, context, and identity – not as a challenge to be overcome, but rather as invaluable wisdom that should inform our activism.   Acknowledging these differences can only make international feminist organizing, and of course, the lives of real women around the world, better.

At the recent Women’s Worlds 2011 conference, held in Ottawa from July 3-7, the partnership of Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter and la Concertation des luttes contre l’exploitation sexuelle presented Flesh Mapping: Prostitution in a globalized world/La Resistencia de las mujeres/Les draps parlent.  It was an interactive multimedia installation that featured video shot in both Vancouver and Montreal, and 70 bed-sheet art canvasses, demonstrating the connections between global trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women.  On display for three whole days, the exhibit was accompanied by both spontaneous dialogue among viewers, as well as structured roundtable discussions among Canadian women (women of colour, Aboriginal women, Quebecois women, white women), as well as women from Norway, Haiti, Nigeria, Morocco, Bangladesh, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Denmark, Israel and Australia.  These speakers included women who have left prostitution, front-line workers, and community organizers.  Ninety-minute roundtable discussions were simultaneously translated into French, English and Spanish.

While the women involved were united in their recognition of the root of women’s inequality and sexual exploitation worldwide (patriarchy and capitalism, a mutually reinforcing, toxic dyad), their unique local experiences and contexts were honoured and highlighted, not glossed over for the sake of letting Western experiences and approaches prevail.  From all appearances each participant was an equal contributor to the knowledge that was shared – no one woman’s wisdom was privileged over another.

Twelve countries, three languages, countless unique voices and experiences, all coming together in a powerful display of feminist organizing.  This is transnational feminism at its finest.

It succeeded at being transnational, I argue, because organizers refused to depart from their radical approach.  They did exactly what Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan prescribe in their book, Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and transnational feminist practices; instead of operating on some pretense of “global sisterhood,” these women created true solidarity by forming alliances with women from all over world, who, while differing in their experiences and local contexts, were united in their efforts to examine, work against, and bring down patriarchy.  For the transnational feminist, the only universal is patriarchy.  Ergo, transnational feminism is, and can only be, radical in nature.

In the debates over how and when to take a transnational approach, some have argued it should be treated as an alternative between two extremes popular in international mobilization.  On the one side is religious dogma of all stripes, undermining women’s rights outright, and on the other, universalist, liberal feminism, which undermines women’s loyalties, local contexts, and unique experiences.  According to some feminist writers, transnational feminism offers a safe route between the two.

But can we really treat transnational feminism simply as an “alternative”?  There is no denying the real threat from religious fundamentalists who continue to spread their messages worldwide, whether in the form of a viral sermon or a horrifying act of domestic terrorism.  Feminists of all leans would agree these groups pose an immediate threat to women worldwide.  But is universalist, liberal ‘feminism’ – pole-dance if it makes him happy, I’m radical if I say I am ‘feminism’ – really that meek by comparison?  Keep in mind this approach is often influenced by what others have referred to as the Congo effect: “Sure Canadian men still get away with battery and harassment on a daily basis and earn 20% more than women do, but hey, at least this ain’t Congo; as long as we’re not living in the rape capital of the world we should just shut up and say thank you.  In the meantime, let’s march in, save these women, and show them how equality is really achieved!” Can we really afford to say this kind of global feminism is one way, but transitional feminism is better?  We cannot, and we should not.

When we allow Canadian, American or Western European-born ‘feminist’ movements that place individual ‘freedom’ and ‘empowerment’ at their centre (of course within a Canadian, American or Western European context) we let centuries of feminist energy dedicated to dismantling patriarchy fizzle into marches and legal battles focused on very privileged women remaking age-old sexist practices (prostitution, sexual assault victim-blaming) into ways for them to profit; both literally, as profiteers in this capitalist system they seem happy to continue to perpetuate;  or metaphorically, as the women who gain worldwide fame for making ‘feminist’ activism fun, sexy and enjoyable by all.

The de-radicalization of feminist organizing worldwide makes it easy to pretend we’re fostering some magical global sisterhood.  But feminism ain’t about what’s easy.  It’s time to think, act and organize transnationally, for the good of all women on their terms,  not just the good of women like “us,” on ours.

by Sunsara Taylor

This article was originally posted on The Revolution Newspaper website and was reprinted with permission.

On June 26, the New York Times ran an op-ed from Ross Douthat which highlighted the horror of there being 160 million girls missing from the world today, largely owing to sex-selective abortions. However, rather than indicting this as a horrible outgrowth of deeply entrenched male-supremacy and patriarchy, Douthat places the blame for this on women’s right to abortion and the few hard-won advances that have been made in some spheres for some women. As such, he ends up arguing for the very male supremacy and traditional values that lead to this kind of thing in the first place.

Douthat’s argument rests on three key assertions.

First, Douthat makes the outrageous claim that the widespread practice of sex-selected abortions is not due to patriarchy, but to female “empowerment” and to abortion technology itself. Second, Douthat distorts and discounts the very liberating aims and actual impact of the fight for women’s ability to control their own reproduction because the programs of some very reactionary forces overlapped at times with the fight for women’s reproductive rights. And, finally, Douthat insists that only the anti-abortion movement can legitimately and fully critique this horror.

On all accounts, as I will show, Douthat is dead wrong.

Let’s begin with his first major argument.

Douthat disputes the notion that sex-selective abortion is caused by patriarchy and misogyny, because, “Thus far, female empowerment often seems to have led to more sex selection, not less.” He cites Mara Hvistendahl’s new book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, to argue, “In many communities… ‘women use their increased autonomy to select for sons,’ because male offspring bring higher social status.”

Excuse me? There is a huge difference between, on the one hand, “women’s empowerment” and increased “autonomy” within a world of patriarchy and male-supremacy; and, on the other hand, the full liberation and equal participation of women together with men in every sphere through the achievement of a world without patriarchy and male supremacy! And lest anyone be confused: a world where “male offspring bring higher social status” is a world in which women are still, a) valued not as full human beings but as the breeders of children, and b) boys are valued more than girls. That is a world of patriarchy.

Further, it is extremely widespread for women in the countries where the practice of sex-selected abortions is most widespread to be severely beaten, set on fire, or burned with acid if they fail to produce a male child. In this context, the fact that some of these women themselves “choose” to selectively abort female fetuses—and even the fact that often this brutality is carried out with the participation of women (most often the mother-in-law)—does not change the fact that this violence, the valuing of women only in terms of the offspring they produce, and the subsequent selection for male fetuses are ALL the result of deeply entrenched male supremacy and patriarchy.

Next, let’s take apart Douthat’s attempts to obscure and bury any discussion of the real interest of women beneath a game of guilt by association.

Douthat cites Hvistendahl in identifying “an unlikely alliance between Republican cold warriors worried that population growth would fuel the spread of Communism and left-wing scientists and activists who believed that abortion was necessary for both ‘the needs of women’ and ‘the future prosperity—or maybe survival—of mankind.’” He continues, “For many of these antipopulation campaigners, sex selection was a feature rather than a bug, since a society with fewer girls was guaranteed to reproduce itself at lower rates.”

Notice first that there is zero discussion from Douthat as to whether or not “abortion [is] necessary for the ‘needs of women.’” In fact, it is. A world without abortion is a world in which women are forced to bear children against their will. It is a world that enslaves women to their biology. It is a world in which women have little more freedom than slaves.

But, Douthat side-steps this basic and fundamental truth by instead “revealing” that there were some reactionary forces whose agendas overlapped in some ways with those fighting for women’s reproductive freedom. Big fucking deal! I spoke to a fanatical End Times fundamentalist not long ago who was eager to seize on recent scientific findings pointing to the tremendous extremes of recent weather patterns, but that doesn’t mean he had anything in common with those fighting to recognize—and put an end to—the manmade causes of climate change!

But to go even further, the fact that some in the movement for women’s reproductive rights have at times been influenced by racism and chauvinism that is so common in an imperialist country like the U.S., does not negate the fact that the right to decide for herself when and whether to have a child is necessary for women to be free.

Finally, Douthat implies that Hvistendahl and others who uphold women’s right to abortion don’t really have firm ground to stand on in condemning the situation that has led to—or the harm caused by—the 160 million missing girls. Instead, Douthat offers the simplistic and wrong-headed claim that “the anti-abortion side has it easier” because it can say outright that, “The tragedy of the world’s 160 million missing girls isn’t that they’re ‘missing.’ The tragedy is that they’re dead.”

Only they aren’t dead, they really are missing. While a fetus has the potential to become a human being, it is not a human being until it is born. Ever notice how we count how long we’ve been alive since the date of our births? Until then—no matter how much the anti-abortion movement romanticizes it and no matter how many “pro-choice” people capitulate to their bullshit—a fetus is a subordinate part of a woman’s body. As such, those girls really are missing because they never came into being as independent biological or social beings.

On the other hand, the women in whose body fetuses grow are fully formed human beings. And each year, 70,000 of those fully formed human beings die due to lack of access to reproductive health and safe abortions. They are not “missing”—those women are dead! And the lives of the millions upon millions of women worldwide who are forced to have children they do not want, their lives are significantly disfigured. And the lives of all women who live in a world that fails to recognize the full humanity and equality of women in every sphere—and instead reduces them to either breeders or sex objects, and quite often both—is horribly diminished.

We do not need the horrors that Douthat is peddling—even greater burden on that half of humanity that has the misfortune in this world of male-supremacy of being born female, the retrenching the very patriarchy that leads to female children being valued less than males, and the further restriction of women’s ability to control their own bodies and their own destinies. We need the kind of thorough-going, world-wide revolution that can, once and for all lift these burdens off of women as a core and driving force in the emancipation of all of humanity—from the lack of access to birth control and abortion to the life-time of restrictions, insults, violence and degradation that comes from being born female.

Sunsara Taylor writes for Revolution Newspaper and sits on the Advisory Board of The World Can’t Wait.

Last night, I was inspired and moved by the powerful, passionate, political voices of three women:renowned legal scholar and anti-prostitution activist Gunilla Ekberg, anti-prostitution activist Trisha Baptie and Sherry Smilie of AWAN, who spoke yesterday at Prostitution and Women’s Equality, calling for the abolition of prostitution in Canada .

I’ll admit that despite the media coverage prostitution gets in Vancouver, in particular when discussing the DTES, the arguments for criminalizing the buying of sex are not something I’m thoroughly familiar with, or used to hearing. Far more time and space is given to those arguing that sex work and the activities surrounding it should be decriminalized in favor of a harm reduction approach (see this earlier post by Meghan Murphy for current legal challenges moving us towards decriminalization).

Thorough discussions of what the abolition of prostitution means are covered here, here and here, and last night’s panel discussion will be aired on the F-Word soon in case you missed it, so I will not delve into the details of this political vision here.

Instead, I am going to tackle three questions Gunilla Ekberg posed to the audience, challenging us to understand that prostitution is violence against women.

Firstly, who are the women used in prostiution?

Second, what is done by men to prostituted women?

Third, what are the effects of prostitution on women in prostiution, and society at large?

Think about these points for a moment, and consider the realities in Canada.

Who are the women used in prostitution?

We know, from collective knowledge and stats like these that women are prostituted in a context of poverty, racism, colonialism, and systemic sexual and physical abuse stemming from a patriarchal society that is tolerant of and complicit in, violence against women. In this context, can it ever be said that a woman is involved in prostitution based on her own free will? The context in which this ‘choice’ has been made cannot be ignored.

What is done by men to prostituted women?

Prostituted women’s bodies are used by men for sex, and that includes a myriad of acts that are humiliating and violent. Prostitution is synonymous with violence. We know this. It’s always lumped into that statement ‘high-risk lifestyle’ –as if it is a lifestyle choice to be at constant risk of violence and death. Prostituted women are beaten, raped, and murdered daily here in Vancouver. This is what is done by men to prostituted women.

What are the effects of prostitution on women in prostitution, and society at large?

Women in prostitution are degraded and devalued, their bodies are abused and trafficked, and they are used by men for pleasure and for profit. When we allow women’s bodies to be purchased and profited from, we perpetuate a patriarchal society that does not value women as equal citizens, a society where violence against women is systemic and alarmingly prevalent.

Examining these three questions, it is pretty clear that prostitution is violent and harmful to women who are directly involved in prostitution and to society in general; it perpetuates inequality between men and women, and contributes to a culture that normalizes violence against women.   Things aren’t going to change though, until we acknowledge that prostitution is violence against women, that men do not have an inherent right to access women’s bodies, and and it’s decriminalization will only serve to push it out of public view.

If you don’t look hard enough, it’s easy to feel like the abolition argument has become ‘passe’. As though arguments against sex slavery and violence against women can go out of style. What I mean, I suppose, is that it has become somewhat  unpopular, let’s say, these days, to talk about abolition. The divides between women and feminists which come up around the argument are, often, vitriolic. The ‘radicals’ are often painted as desiring to “abolish prostitutes–not just prostitution…that we’re after criminalizing everyone connected to prostitution, rather than the profiteers–there’s the accusation that we don’t respect women’s choices (that’s my fucking favourite), and that we’re moralistic and anti-sex.” (I highly recommend reading this whole post I’ve just linked to here, it is very good); those doing the painting thereby discrediting radical feminists and abolitionists in one fell swoop by accusing them of being judgmental and ‘unrealistic’.

I wrote a little bit about this divide back in November and, as I continue to listen and learn and explore the abolitionist argument I become all the more frustrated by the misrepresentations of those who support it and all the more disheartened by those who seem to think we must settle. That we must settle for a world where men feel entitled to buy women’s bodies and lives, and for laws and a culture that desires to protect male buyers more than female prostitutes.

I’d like to point out that, while this argument is often marginalized within more mainstream conversations about ‘sex work’, and even within feminist discourse, the work is still happening and the fight is going strong. A couple of events coming up in Vancouver point to this.

On March 10, 2011, REED and EVE will be celebrating the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day with an event called Prostitution and Women’s Equality – Imagining More for Women. A panel discussion at the Vancouver Public Library (350 West Georgia Street in the Alice MacKay Room) will feature Gunilla Ekberg – International Human Rights Consultant, who will present on the Nordic Model of law and policy- “an alternative to complete decriminalization that enshrines the dignity of women and addresses the male demand for paid sex” and Trisha Baptie, of EVE (formerly Exploited Voices now Educating). This event argues that prostitution cannot be made safe through decriminalization and regulation, that prostitution is far from harmless and is, no hold barred, violence against women. It imagines more for women than normalized prostitution.

And on Wednesday, February 23, 2011, there will be a screening of the film Our Lives to Fight For at SFU Vancouver (515 West Hastings Street Vancouver, BC) from 7-9pm. Here is a link to the invite, it is better quality than the one I’ve uploaded below.

In case you aren’t able to make it to the screening, I’ve posted the documentary below, with permission, made by 9 fourth year Communications students from Simon Fraser University.

Inspired by the recent attempts to strike down 3 key criminal code provisions around prostitution in Canada, the film argues that while “Decriminalizing prostitutes is a step forward…johns and pimps rather than prostitutes should be the targets of prostitution laws” and, that, while many argue that there is safety in legalized brothels, what plays out in ‘real life’ does not in fact, protect women, but rather protects pimps and johns and perpetuates the idea that men should be able to have access to women’s bodies, that their needs surpass the lives and safety of women and that masculinity and male sexuality, within this context, is uncontrollable, unemotional, and unpolitical. And further, that we should not stop there, at decriminalization. Rather we must work towards abolition via a Canadianized version of the Nordic model, which decriminalizes the women who sell sex acts, offers support to those who wish to exit, and criminalizes the buyers. Within a framework that promotes simple decriminalization and legalization, the assumption is that prostitution is natural and inevitable, and male sexuality is represented as being unrelated to the larger context of misogyny and of violence against women. The discourse that founds these assumptions is often that ‘it’s here to stay so we may as well just accept it and make the best of it’; leading us to accept the idea men can and should be able to own women’s bodies, for a price. What does prostitution really tell us about how much we value women in our society?

So based on the concern that “There is a very real possibility that this judgment could spread and influence the rest of Canada”, this film was made, arguing for the “abolitionist perspective [which] views prostitution as a modern form of slavery, which must be stopped.”

This film does not assume that prostitution is inevitable, but rather that it can and must be stopped. That marginalized women are not the sacrificial lambs of privileged women who desire ‘choice’ (for themselves or for other privileged women) or of the sexist and one-dimensional discourse that surrounds male sexuality.

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